


take the stage and deliver

by insistonyourcupofstars



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, I've never done this before, The Hargreeves siblings get a second chance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-03 23:49:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17887475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insistonyourcupofstars/pseuds/insistonyourcupofstars
Summary: Vanya wakes up after the end of the world.The Hargreeves siblings have a lot to talk about.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been saying for years that I would post something on here and Umbrella Academy finally pushed me over the edge, so that's worth something. We all need more Five and Vanya brother-sister content, so I guess I'll just have to make my own contribution.
> 
> TW for a mild panic attack, Vanya's been through it.

Vanya woke up before she opened her eyes. 

Something wasn’t right. 

When she was young, she would dream she was falling. The dreams never had a clear beginning. A hazy storm of white noise, and suddenly the floor fell out from beneath her and she was hurtling towards nothing, screaming for her brothers and sister while no sound came out. She would flail in the empty air, the exact antithesis of the grace she so desperately tried to cling to in the waking world. Her fingers would close around nothing, surrounded by grey with no start or end. A cold metal floor quickly approaching, and she would try to scream _one more time, ___

____

__

And then she would wake. Eyes screwed shut, hands clutching her bedsheets, biting back a scream. Eyes closed, because she was afraid of what she might see. That she would still be falling. Silent, because if she woke her family in the middle of the night with a stupid nightmare, she would never hear the end of it. Vanya would see in their eyes the time she had wasted, their disappointment in her and her fears. Her siblings went on world saving missions, risked their lives every day and pushed their limits getting stronger, and Vanya couldn’t handle a nightmare? No, she would bite her tongue until it bled, grip her blanket until her knuckles were white, and keep her eyes closed until none of it was real.

Again she woke, like she had all those years ago as a child, eyes shut tightly and lips pressed together. And something wasn’t right. More accurately, nothing was right. 

Her clothes and skin felt wrong on her body, her head felt like it was trying to light itself on fire from the inside out, her mind felt like it had been knocked sideways with no way to right itself. Instead of her hands holding a blanket, her fingernails dug into her palms. There were voices. She can’t tell where they’re coming from. Something inside her head, but mostly outside. There are voices, and she keeps her eyes shut.

She knows them, but she can’t place them. Distant and painful. Right, but off. 

“Is this safe?”

“What’s the plan?”

“God, I still can’t believe-”

“Just let me _think _.”__

____

____

A voice jumps out. 

_Five? ___

____

____

Vanya tries to open her eyes, but the assault of fluorescent light is too much, and she snaps them back shut. She realizes she’s lying on a hard floor, and she thinks of her nightmares and being locked away not once, but twice. 

She feels sick to her stomach. 

Vanya takes a shuddering breath, and immediately she can feel a presence materialize above her. 

“Vanya? Vanya, can you hear me?” 

That’s Five, she knows, but something still isn’t right as she feels him grip her wrist and shake it slightly. Vanya opens her eyes, her brother staring down at her. An inexplicable panic seizes her chest. 

She blinks, and she remembers everything. 

She scrambles to sit up and move away from Five, to put some distance between them, unable to breathe under the weight of the memories that have just hit her. She shuts her eyes, but then the hum of the fluorescent light and Five repeating her name and the other whispers are too _loud _, and all she can see is the concert hall, so she opens them again.__

____

____

“It’s alright,” someone else is saying, and there’s a hand on her shoulder and Vanya doesn’t know where to look or what to do with herself or who to listen to as the panic swallows her completely.

“Give her some space, god, back up, Jesus you two!” 

_Klaus _, her brain supplies immediately. But not Klaus _now, _Klaus _before, _way before, his voice is different. Her eyes snap up. Five is crouching in front of her, and over his shoulder Vanya can see a much younger Klaus, and _what the fuck is going on?_______

_____ _

_____ _

She thinks Five is saying something to her, but there is blood rushing in her ears and the ground beneath her is trembling. She takes in the sight of her siblings, all so young, and, 

_Ben?_

____

____

She’s hyperventilating now, aware of Allison’s hand on her back and trying to rid herself of it. 

“No, no, no, no, no.” 

She looks at her siblings, and the fear eats at her very soul, and her eyes close once again as she blacks out.

* * *

When Vanya wakes a second time, she’s lying on something soft and there’s something like a blanket on top of her. It’s silent, and she opens her eyes quickly, terrified that her siblings might be gone, terrified that they might be there. She rolls over and is met with a decent compromise between those fears. 

Five sits cross legged on the floor, scribbling something in a book. Vanya realizes she’s still on the ground, this time on top of some towels with Five’s jacket acting as a blanket. 

Then she realizes she is _also _in her younger body.__

____

____

_Okay _, she thinks, _okay _. In the face of everything else that has happened over the last week, the last day, this is not the worst. She also thinks that she’s maybe in shock, so that’s probably helping the adjustment.__ __

__

__

____

____

Vanya doesn’t say anything, just stares at Five for a few long moments until he feels that he’s being watched and looks over at her. He sighs and closes his book. 

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” Vanya replies, unsure. Her voice sounds so much younger, and it brings her back to days she would much rather forget. She’d much rather forget pretty much everything right now, if she were being honest. 

“I’m sorry about before,” Five says. “We should have known this would be overwhelming when you woke up.” 

Somehow, Vanya hears what he does not say, but wants to. _There are a lot of things we should have known._

____

____

Vanya doesn’t know what to say, so she stays silent. She tries to sit up, but Five is quick to reach over a hand that she immediately flinches away from. He looks wary, but backs down, giving her space. 

“Don’t sit up,” he warns her. “You’re not doing too hot right now, you need to rest.” 

Vanya can’t help but think that the world probably isn’t doing too hot right now, either. 

Five reaches out to hand her a water bottle. 

“I can’t drink that without sitting up,” Vanya points out. Five rolls his eyes but nods, moving to help her sit, but Vanya quickly shakes her head and raises herself on shaky arms alone. As usual. She takes the bottle in hand and sips slowly, watching Five watch her. 

“What do you remember?” he asks carefully. And since she really, really doesn’t want to talk, she just nods, hoping he understands. But he waits, and Vanya sighs. 

“Everything. Well, not how I got like this,” she looks down at herself, Five’s jacket having fallen into her lap, “but everything else.” She doesn’t know where they are, or when they are, or what happened, but she knows enough. 

She knows what she did. 

“We’re going to fix this,” Five says, and Vanya isn’t sure if it’s more to her or himself. “We’re going to fix…”

“Me?” she asks, and she can’t tell how it sounds to him, but he winces. 

She finally takes a good look at the room her and Five are in, which appears to actually be closer to an oversized storage closet. 

“Where are the others?” she asks, not sure she wants to know the answer. Five nods his head towards the door. 

Vanya lowers herself back down to the floor, staring at the ceiling. 

“I can’t, I can’t,” she swallows. “I can’t talk right now. I can’t.” Five is silent for a minute. 

“Okay,” he says. And she expects him to leave her there, lying on the floor of the closet. But he doesn’t. He moves so he’s leaning against a stack of boxes, opens his book back up, picks up his pencil. 

“Okay,” Five repeats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is super self indulgent. I don't know if I have a plan for this, I don't know if it'll be a cohesive story or just a collection of the siblings actually having real conversations for once in their lives. The others will eventually make their appearances, I just had to start off with Vanya and Five because I'm starved for content about their sibling relationship. Stayed tuned for what is probably going to be a poorly written disaster.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Never in a million years did I think posting the second chapter would be scarier than posting the first, but here we are. 
> 
> Listen I'm the kind of person who gets really emotional when people are kind so I've just been sobbing over everyone who said nice things, y'all are too sweet, I appreciate you. 
> 
> If Vanya seems a little all over the place here, it's because she is. You try ending the world with your newfound superpowers, almost killing your siblings, and then time traveling. It would take a lot out of you. She's trying her best.

Vanya wakes to the sound of a door opening. She’s not sure when she fell back asleep, or for how long, but she has her back to where Five had been sitting before and she’s too nervous to roll over and see if anyone is there.

“She awake yet?” the voice of a young Diego she hasn’t heard in ages asks.

“I told you, I’ll come get you all once she wakes up and I have a chance to calm her down.” 

Five hadn’t left. Vanya feels the relief wash over her, before a thought intrudes on its own accord.

 _He should have. Everyone would be better off if you were removed from their equation._

Vanya can’t disagree. 

Another thought, quieter, _they made you this way._

Diego sighs, snapping Vanya out of her spiral. 

“Five, she’s been out for almost a day now.” 

“And when I get worried, you’ll be the first to know,” Five says dismissively. 

“Have you ever really worried about her?” Diego snaps. He sounds pissed, his anger not befitting his young voice, and Vanya isn’t sure what to do with that information. She’s not sure what to do with this question. 

“Goodbye, Diego,” Five says, sounding disinterested. Vanya imagines that he hasn’t bothered to look up from whatever it is he might be doing. There’s a moment of silence where Vanya can practically feel Diego trying not to strangle Five on the spot for being such a brat, and then he’s gone. 

She rolls over to face Five, and he’s watching her already like he was expecting it. 

“Thanks,” she whispers. He just nods, and looks her over with eyes that tell of more years than Vanya can comprehend. After he went missing, he never aged in Vanya’s memory. She always pictured her thirteen year old brother storming out of the house, she always wished she had stopped him, she always hoped he would come back. She never imagined it would be like this, though. He was frozen in her mind’s eye, but never like this. 

“Vanya,” Five starts slowly. “I know you don’t want to talk. But everyone is out there, and if you don’t make an appearance soon I don’t think there’s much I’ll be able to do to stop Allison from making us bring you to the hospital.” 

“What would you tell the doctors?” Vanya asks wryly, sitting up. “My ordinary sister ended the world, I brought us back in time, and now she’s knocked out?” 

“You were knocked out for the end of the world, and the time travel,” Five points out.

“With everything that happened this week, doesn’t take a genius to figure those parts out.” She looks around. “Where - when, are we?” she asks. 

“2002,” Five answers, “the donut shop, specifically.” 

“What?” Vanya asks. “Why?”

“I’m… not entirely sure,” Five admits. “The goal was just to go back, I was so focused on making sure all of you made it back with me, I don’t know how we ended up here. Time travel is messy.” 

“I didn’t know you could bring people along,” Vanya says. 

“I didn’t know either. I wasn’t sure it would work, but, I guess we’re all learning new things about ourselves.”

Vanya doesn’t want to respond to that, so she takes a moment to look around the storage closet again.

“Wait,” she says suddenly. “Are we just hiding in the back of an open donut shop?” 

“Closed for the weekend,” Five says, standing up to pace with his hands in his pockets. 

“Griddy’s is 24/7, seven days a week,” Vanya says, suspicious. Five clicks his tongue and nods. 

“That it is.”

“What did you do?” Vanya deadpans. Five turns on his heel to face her fully and holds his hands up placatingly. 

“Not me. Allison heard a rumor that the whole staff took a sudden vacation, and forgot about the children that materialized out of thin air in the middle of the store.” 

_God, Allison,_ Vanya thinks. She rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. She has done so much, and nothing feels right in her head. She can’t think straight, something feels deeply wrong. She decides she might as well focus on that as Five sits back down in front of her. 

“So, they send you in here to interrogate me? Deal with me if I lost control again?” Vanya asks, reaching for the water Five had left next to her. 

For the first time in her life, Vanya sees her brother look uncomfortable. She reaches as far back into her memory as she can, but the expression just isn’t there. When they were children, he was confident about everything. Always right, always thinking, always coming up with something new. He never cared about what their siblings thought, never sought their father’s approval. He could always easily outsmart any of them, his powers always giving him advantages. Five was made of nevers and always. Always confident, never uncomfortable. 

She puts the water down without drinking any. 

“Five?”

He won’t meet her eye. 

“They thought you’d… take it better from me. Prefer to talk to me. The end of the world, the time travel, all that.” 

_Because you didn’t lock me up,_ Vanya thinks. _Because I never felt like you hated me._

_Until he left._ Vanya shakes her head. That is one of the thoughts that does not feel like her own. 

“If not, I can-”

“No,” Vanya cuts him off. “You’re fine.” 

They stare at each other for a minute, and Five’s brief moment of discomfort lingers in her mind, making her feel even worse than she already did. 

“I’m not here to ‘deal with you,’ I just need you to work with me,” Five says. Vanya is shot back through her memories. 

_She’s nine years old, in the courtyard of the academy. There’s a tree, tall and winding, and a spider has made its home between two of the lowest branches._

_Vanya adores it._

_It’s big, dark, and its web is absolutely beautiful. Vanya takes to visiting whenever she’s allowed free time, tracing the delicate strings with her eyes and watching the spider weave its masterpiece. Vanya thinks it is extraordinary._

_Today though, she’s nine years old, in the courtyard of the academy, and her siblings are there as well._

_Vanya is off to the side, away from her family, marveling at the web and watching her spider scuttle down the bark of the tree towards the ground._

_“Whatcha doing?” Allison asks from behind Vanya. Vanya jumps, not used to the attention from her sister, but moves slightly so Allison can have a better view right as the spider reaches the dirt._

_Allison shrieks, jumping back._

_“Kill it! Get rid of it!”_

_“It lives here,” Vanya protests weakly, as Luther, Diego, Klaus, and Ben come to investigate. Allison is jumping from foot to foot, wringing her hands, and she turns to their brothers._

_“Kill it!” she whines.  
“It’s not bothering anyone, if you don’t like it just go away!” Vanya says, trying to sound brave. Diego steps forward, and Vanya remembers Five saying that “Diego always needs to be the hero.” Vanya hadn’t really known what that meant at the time, but she has the feeling this is it. Diego raises his foot._

_“Leave it alone!” Vanya stamps her foot in a rare act of defiance._

_“It’s disgusting, Vanya,” Diego says, stomping down on the spider. Vanya’s lip wobbles. “Here we go,” Diego rolls his eyes, and Klaus snickers. Ben just shakes his head, but it’s unclear at who._

_“Alright, enough,” Five says, strolling over._

_“Because Vanya needs special treatment?”_

_“Because if you make her cry, I’m gonna be the one that has to deal with it.”_

_That sets her over the edge. The next time she blinks, tears roll down her cheeks and she tries to quickly wipe them away with her sleeve._

_“Come on, Vanya,” Five says, turning and walking away without checking to see if she’s following. Of course, she is, rushing to fall into step beside him. She bites her lip, face burning from the embarrassment of crying, chest and throat tightening at the guilt of forcing Five to deal with her. “You gotta work with me here, Van,” Five breaks the silence as they step back into the house. “When they’re being mean to you, you gotta work with me.” It sounds like something repeated out of a book, which is typical of Five. She isn’t entirely sure what he’s saying, but it’s like that a lot with Five who says he doesn’t like feelings, so she takes it to mean ‘don’t cry, I’m trying to help.’ She nods, and Five leads her into the kitchen, where Mom is waiting with cookies. Vanya tries not to think about the empty spiderweb._

She’s broken out of the startlingly vivid memory by Five snapping his fingers in front of her face in a way that is so utterly _Five,_ she has to smile. 

He looks worried. Vanya is seeing a whole range of emotions she didn’t think Five was capable of today. 

“Where did you go?”

“I was just thinking.” 

This doesn’t seem to be enough for Five, who eyes her critically. 

“You need to tell me what’s going on in your head. I need to know what you’re thinking, I need to know what you were thinking when you went all…” Five gestures a little frenetically, “apocalypse.” 

Vanya wants to lie. Because it’s not an easy question, and there’s no easy answer. She saw her angry and bitter younger self, she saw her siblings, she saw power, and she’s afraid of what might happen if she tells the truth. She doesn’t want to be locked up again, and she’s already starting to get antsy in this closet. Part of her believes that won’t happen this time around, not with Five here, but part of her also remembers that Five seems to have left her time and time again. 

It’s a selfish thought, and Vanya adds these intrusive anxieties to the list of things she’s afraid to tell Five about. It’s like someone is thinking for her, and Vanya isn’t a fan. 

“Is everyone okay?” Vanya asks, not even bothering to be subtle in avoiding the question. Five looks frustrated, which calms Vanya down, because a frustrated Five is a Five she knows how to handle. 

“Vanya-” 

“Please.” 

Five sighs.

“They're all okay. Everyone.”

“Was…” Vanya swallows. “Was that really Ben?”

Five nods, and Vanya inhales sharply. 

“How?” 

“I don’t know,” Five says, running a hand down his face. “I don’t know anything right now. That’s why I need you to talk to me.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you when I came back.” 

“You broke into my apartment,” Vanya reminds him. 

“And I left,” Five says. “And you came to find me, and you tried to find out what was going on in my head, and you tried to help, and I wouldn’t let you. I’m asking you to let me.”

Vanya bites her lip. She’s aware that he’s at least in part saying what he thinks she wants to hear. He guessed right, of course. 

“When they locked me up after,” she flinches, looking at the ground. “I, um. I saw myself, heard her. We were so mad. Or, she was.” She stops, looking up at Five. “You think I’m crazy.” He shakes his head. So, she continues. “I think, Dad had me on all those meds and I think maybe my brain, my, my everything, couldn’t handle it. And everything was just… so much.” She sees Five press his lips together in a tight line. It’s easier if she doesn’t look at him. “I was walking, room to room, and I saw everyone. We were all kids. And everyone was telling me,” she falters, her headache coming back as she tries to delve into her memories and verbalize them. “Telling me all of the things they used to say. Everyone wanted me out of their hair.” 

“And that’s when you destroyed the place?” 

Vanya shoots him a look, but, realizing she doesn’t have the right, looks away again. 

“Yeah.” 

“Were you in control?” 

Vanya wants to be hurt by that, but it’s a fair question. 

“I don’t know. I remember it. I knew what I was doing. But it was like…” 

“Like?” Five presses, his characteristic impatience surfacing. Vanya grows equally frustrated. She feels broken from the onset of powers, from the time jump, from being in her younger body, and everything feels like it’s behind clouded glass. All of her explanations are a step out of reach, the words visible in her brain but smudged and out of focus. 

“I don’t know!” she snaps. “I’m not going to kill everyone, if that’s what you’re asking.” She scowls, and Five looks away. 

“Are you still hearing yourself?” he asks, sounding suddenly exhausted and so much older. Vanya spent virtually no time with him between his return and the world going to shit, so she has to remind herself yet again that he _is_ older now. 

“What do you mean?” she asks. 

“The you who you heard before you destroyed the house.”

It takes Vanya a moment to sort through Five’s jumble of words, but she was always good at it as a kid. When Five would go off on rambling tangents, stringing all of his ideas together in ways that didn’t make sense to the others, Vanya could translate. He was asking how stable she was. 

“I don’t know,” Vanya answers honestly. “I don’t see her, me, whatever. But I feel like some of the stuff I’m thinking isn’t… right. And sometimes it’s like my brain just takes me somewhere else.” 

Five nods, and stands back up. 

“Alright, don’t mention that to the others.”

“What? Five, is this really the time to be keeping secrets from each other?” 

“I don’t trust them with this,” Five lowers his voice, speaking through gritted teeth. “They’re unpredictable.” They stare each other down for a moment, Vanya having a brief flash of anger over the implication that Five was somehow free from the blame of everything that happened, before the guilt immediately swallows her alive. She nods, relenting. 

Five offers her a hand to stand, but Vanya ignores it and pushes herself up on her own. Vanya can tell Five is biting back a smart remark as he turns towards the door. 

_Leave it to a pair of Hargreeves to turn everything into a fight,_ Vanya thinks, following her brother.

* * *

They step out into the main room, right into the middle of a hushed argument. The others haven’t noticed them yet. Vanya takes a moment to take in the scene of her siblings, all far too young, arguing in the middle of a barren donut shop while night engulfs the city outside. 

“Can’t we make Five do it?” Klaus asks, scratching at his wrist. He looks like his anxiety is through the roof, and Vanya wonders what, besides the end of the world, could set him off like this right now. 

“You should do it,” Diego is saying to Allison, holding something in his hand. Vanya’s heart hurts looking at them. 

“No, no way,” Allison says with finality, and Vanya has never been so happy to hear her sister’s voice. “I took that away from her once, I won’t do it again,” Allison is saying. 

“I’m sure she’d appreciate it coming from you, considering you’re the only one who didn’t try to kill her,” Diego says. Vanya feels Five tense beside her. 

“Vanya,” Ben says suddenly, having noticed her and Five on the outskirts of the room, and all eyes are suddenly on her. Her throat tightens, and stupidly, like she’s being possessed by her younger self’s soul and not just borrowing her body, she tears up looking at Ben. 

“Hey,” she says softly. Despite everything she’s done, he smiles, and _god she missed him._ She looks at her other siblings, and her eyes fall on what they had been arguing about. It’s a bottle of her pills. “Where did you get those?” she asks, apprehensive. Diego’s grip on them tightens. 

“Back at the house,” Diego says. “I snuck in. We thought they might help.” 

Vanya’s eyes travel over all of her siblings, and Luther won’t look at her. 

“I don’t understand,” Vanya says, trying not to focus on the voice in her head saying that her siblings are trying to lock her up again. Her eyes meet Allison’s, and Allison smiles, which is probably meant to reassure Vanya, but it only makes Vanya more afraid that she’s about to mess everything up. “You went to the house? Are we… actually in our physical younger bodies, or did we just get rewound when we got thrown here? Are our younger selves also here or, are we them?” Vanya is certain none of that made any sense, but apparently her Five translation ability works both ways. 

“It’s a little bit of all of that, a little bit of none of that,” Five explains, hopping over the counter. He begins the process of putting on a pot of coffee, and Vanya sees Luther and Diego simultaneously roll their eyes. If she weren’t holding herself together by a thread, Vanya would laugh. “If I’m right, we sort of… temporarily took their places. Displaced them.” 

“But we _are_ them,” Klaus interjects, clearly still trying to understand. Five sighs in a way that tells Vanya he’s attempted to explain this multiple times already. If Vanya had to venture a guess, she’d say he had probably done a half-assed job, dismissing everyone’s confusion. “And we don’t remember this happening to us,” Klaus continues. 

“It doesn’t work like that,” Five says, waving a hand. “Time travel is-”

“Messy?” Luther interjects sarcastically. 

“I could rip your throat out with my teeth,” Five says calmly, as the smell of coffee begins to carry through the air. He turns back to Vanya. “Your bodies changed before the jump was complete, it’s not like you took over their bodies. Their consciousness - our younger consciousnesses, however you want to think about it - haven’t been erased. But they’re not here either. Think of it as a rift. It should fix itself once we fix… everything.” 

“Did anybody get any of that?” Klaus asks. 

“They’re on pause,” Vanya offers. 

“But how?” Diego asks. 

“Does it matter?” Five and Vanya both ask at the same time. They glance at each other, and Vanya looks away, sensing that he’s still mad about something. 

“Oh, wonderful, Vanya speaks Five’s dialect of crazy now,” Klaus sighs dramatically. 

Vanya realizes belatedly that “crazy” is probably the last thing her siblings should think of her right now, and that’s probably what Five was getting at before. Against her better judgement, she turns to Diego and holds out her hand. 

“You don’t have to fight about that, I’ll take them.” 

The room goes silent, but about a thousand voices fill Vanya’s head at the same time. 

_You’re giving them what they want._

_This is how they lock you up._

_If you do this, they will trust you. This is how they will know not to lock you up._

_They will lock you up._

_It’s different now, Five is here._

_Five doesn’t care, Five is angry._

_You are dangerous._

_They will lock you up._

_Allison will not let that happen._

_They are dangerous._

_You have to protect them._

_You are falling._

“Vanya,” Allison says, walking towards her. “You don’t have to do this. We should be helping you figure this out, not doing the same thing that got you into this mess.” Looking at Allison’s young face, Vanya is reminded of a million things that she can’t properly sort through. The sister she looked up to and resented, the sister she loves. She still doesn’t know exactly what happened before they jumped back in time, but she’s pretty sure Allison was on her side. Even after everything. It was probably Five’s job to explain everything to her, but he didn’t exactly get the chance before Vanya complicated things. Without meaning to, she glances back to him for guidance as Allison’s words echo in her mind. _You don’t have to do this._

Five is leaning against the counter, sipping coffee, and he shrugs. His expression tells everyone in the room that it’s Vanya’s call. The way his fingers tighten around the mug, the way his eyes narrow almost imperceptibly, tell Vanya a different story entirely. 

_Just for now,_ he says to her. _Just until I know what’s going on._

“Just for now,” Vanya says, voice shaking. She trusts Five. Allison frowns. 

“Are you sure?” she asks, reaching for Vanya’s hand. Vanya instinctively flinches away, and pretends not to see the look on Allison’s face. 

“I’m sure. Just for now. While we… plan?” 

Allison reluctantly nods, and there is so much Vanya wishes she had the time to say, but Diego tosses her the pills, and Vanya has to steel herself for something she never thought she’d do. Voluntarily suppressing the powers she just learned she had hurts like hell, but not as much as almost killing all of her siblings had hurt. She deserves this. 

Everyone watches as she unscrews the cap and pops two of the pills dry. And everyone, except for Allison, looks visibly relieved. 

Vanya just feels shattered. 

“Alright!” Klaus exclaims. “Planning? Saving the world? What’s first?” 

The room is filled with a low hum of chatter as everyone comes together at the counter, and as her meds begin to circulate through her system, Vanya has never felt more out of place, which is saying something. There are loose and intricate connections running through her brain that she can’t understand, she feels fragile, and she feels like she’s missing the piece that made her this way. Her mind drifts to the empty spiderweb. Her thoughts land on falling. 

She has never felt more out of place. But this time, when Allison tries to take her hand, Vanya lets her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Umbrella Academy: *gives us ten episodes worth of complex content*
> 
> Me: *gets hung up on the line about Vanya crying when her siblings step on ants* 
> 
> Some other fun facts: 
> 
> 1\. this is not where I meant for this chapter to go at all 
> 
> 2\. it's still really self indulgent 
> 
> 3\. I didn't proofread this 
> 
> 4\. my time travel explanation is bullshit but if Five never has to explain himself then neither do I
> 
> 5\. I love you
> 
> I promise they'll talk more next time, Vanya just needs a minute to refresh her brain.


End file.
